


a promise kept

by atlasarchivist



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-07-14 11:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16039148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlasarchivist/pseuds/atlasarchivist
Summary: just a quick, self-indulgent one shot regarding commander shepard & kaidan alenko . post-me3





	a promise kept

  
“You did good, child. I’m proud of you.”

She could hear the blood starting to pool in the back of his throat. She felt her own, too. Her limbs felt heavy and she turned eerie eyes toward the open sight. Earth … was burning still. The Reaper ships were swarming toward the surface and from the height of the Citadel, they looked little more than ants crawling over a marble.

“Thanks.” She said and reached for his hand. It was limp. “Captain?” She weakly spoke and turned her throbbing head to see. His open eyes faced the destruction outlayed before them but they saw not a single thing. The old soldier was done - just as he said, no one comes out untouched.

“Best seats in the house,” she muttered and felt cold on her hips. She reached down a hand, equally soaked and tacky with her own blood and more came flooding out.

She sat back, her job was finally done, she did all she could … Shepard shut her eyes and breathed a heavy sigh. Blood was soaking underneath her and staining the bulkheads. She heard machines whirring all around her and felt Anderson’s body go limp against her shoulder.

This was it. This was the end. This is what she had fought for, what she had died for and yet …

_And yet._

This could not be the end. She had allowed herself one single moment of normality, of happiness and it was fading like all the heat of the world. Her body was going numb and cold and her vision was starting to blacken around the edges. Everything looked coated in a fine film. She gripped her side, sparing a single look at her whitening fingers and a moment to recognize she was shaking.

_Not long now, not long at all._

“Shepard!” She heard Hackett’s voice through the miraculously undamaged comm system. “Shepard? Nothing is happening. It must be on your end. _Shepard!_ ”

Just hit the button, right? Kaidan always did the technical things, Tali and Garrus too -- she hoped they were not dead. She hoped they made it. She remembered running toward the light, remembered flying away from Harbinger’s gun when it blasted and pricked the earth. She did not see them afterward, she just kept on going, kept on walking, kept on shooting.

So she sat up and struggled with the weight of her own body, feeling like seven tons of lead. So she crawled toward the terminal, looking eighty-feet tall without a ladder to climb. She slipped on her own blood that had mixed with the Illusive Man’s and Anderson’s, all so very red for all so very different people.

“I can’t see --” she said. “I don’t know how --” she could not hold on anymore. She felt all of it fade in an instant.

All drawn lines ended here, where she lay with barely a hitch of air left in her lungs.

All the swirling visages broken by tragedy and design focused on a single point, a single moment held perilously close to the heart and seamlessly in the mind.

And this was it, but she could not get up. She could not move, she could scarcely breathe.

* * *

 

The blast was like an earthquake bred in the sky, forcing them to lay flat on the ground and cover their heads with their arms. Coates had pulled him from some debris, barely conscious until the man slapped him across the face. It sent his head in a spin and he asked where she was but, she was gone, Anderson too. Coates had seen them get up, an amazing thing he said, and he could only watch as they both walked toward the beam. He did not know what happened after that. They both stood up and watched the Reaper ships go dead. They both knew what it meant, Kaidan more than Coates.

There would be no Cerberus to fix her this time. There would be no special technology or secret projects that could bring her back. They had destroyed the Illusive Man’s station with glee in their hearts and hands. Their advancements were lost to the dust that galaxies were made of.

“I’m sorry, Major.” Coates clasped his shoulder and tended the wounded who watched in awe as the great ships fell.

She had done it, though. She had accomplished her mission and despite the hollow ache in his chest, he was proud.

* * *

 

She had been waiting, _so long_ , she said.

She had been watching, _all along_ , she said.

She said she watched over his children, saw his hair turn to gray and loved him even then. She said she watched him hold the hand of his wife, the one he spent long years loving and crying and laughing with.

She bore no scars, her eyes a deep and royal blue, her skin a beautiful fine cut porcelain. She was the girl he knew only from photographs. She was the girl he loved underneath the harsh red scars and sour turn in her lips.

“Come on,” she said with her hand outstretched. “Everyone is waiting.”

The field was rolling with a steady, lazy wind and they took it all in stride.

“You finally made it,” she said with tears in her eyes.

“I promised, didn’t I?”

Her smile was wide and full of the crooked teeth he found so endearing.

“You did.” 


End file.
